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Lockerbie bomber dies

Key to convicting al-Megrahi was the testimony of a Malta shopkeeper who identified him as having bought a man’s shirt in his store. Scraps of the garment were found wrapped around the timing device.

However, a Scottish judicial body that carried out a major review of the evidence cast doubt on the shopowner’s ID of al-Megrahi and said there was evidence the shirt was purchased on a day when al-Megrahi was not in Malta.

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Al-Megrahi’s lawyers also claimed that British and U.S. authorities tampered with evidence, disregarded witness statements and steered investigators away from suggestions the bombing was an Iranian-financed plot carried out by Palestinians to avenge the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner by a U.S. warship — in which some 290 people were killed — several months before the Lockerbie bombing. The judicial body, however, discounted theories of intentional misdirection.

Al-Megrahi had appealed his conviction, but had to drop the appeal to be eligible for compassionate release.

“I say in the clearest possible terms, which I hope every person in every land will hear — all of this I have had to endure for something that I did not do,” al-Megrahi said in a statement after his release.

“I had most to gain and nothing to lose about the whole truth coming out — until my diagnosis of cancer,” he said. “To those victims’ relatives who can bear to hear me say this, they continue to have my sincere sympathy for the unimaginable loss that they have suffered.”

Some of the victims’ families in Britain are also not convinced of al-Megrahi’s guilt.

“By abandoning his appeal, we the families will be robbed of the opportunity to find justice,” the Rev. John Mosey, whose daughter Helga died aboard Flight 103, said in 2009.

“I came away from the court 85 percent convinced he did not do it, based on the evidence I heard,” said Mosey, who is from Cumbria, England, and attended all but one week of al-Megrahi’s nine-month trial.

In announcing al-Megrahi’s release from prison, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said he was motivated by Scottish values to show mercy even though al-Megrahi had not shown compassion to his victims.

“Some hurts can never heal, some scars can never fade,” MacAskill said. “Mr. al-Megrahi now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power.”